World Polio Day

On World Polio Day, join the World’s Biggest Commercial

  

Rotary News -- 24 October 2012  

O n World Polio Day, 24 October, people around the globe will participate in the World’s Biggest Commercial, promoting the international effort to eradicate the devastating disease. 

The innovative, interactive online initiative gives everyone a chance to join Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bill Gates, Jackie Chan, Angelique Kidjo, and other world figures and celebrities who have already joined in Rotary’s This Close campaign in support of polio eradication. Participants can upload photos of themselves to Rotary’s polio eradication website, endpolionow.org, to be edited into the constantly expanding promotional spot. They receive an email with a direct link to their image and comment within the commercial.

Rotary is also releasing End Polio Now, an eclectic album of songs performed by its celebrity polio eradication ambassadors from the music industry. The lineup includes several polio survivors: violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, folk rock musician Donovan, and Staff Benda Bilili, a Congolese soukous band scheduled to launch its U.S. tour in Los Angeles on World Polio Day. The End Polio Now album is available for download on iTunes, and soon as a CD from shop.rotary.org, with all proceeds from sales going to PolioPlus.  

Coinciding with World Polio Day, Rotary is ramping up its advocacy work in the 200 countries and regions where Rotary clubs exist to encourage every national government to commit to help meet a $700 million funding shortfall for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative through 2013.  

Although new polio cases are at an all-time low -- there were fewer than 180 worldwide in 2012 as of 16 October -- the funding gap has already curtailed scheduled immunization activities in polio-affected countries. If eradication fails and polio rebounds, up to 200,000 children per year could be paralyzed.  

“Governments need to step up and honor their commitments to polio eradication if we are to achieve our goal of a polio-free world,” says Wilfrid J. Wilkinson, chair of The Rotary Foundation. “We are at a true tipping point, with success never closer than it is right now. We must seize the advantage by acting immediately, or risk breaking our pledge to the world’s children.”  

Here are other ways you can support the global effort to eradicate polio:

• Upload your photo for the World's Biggest Commercial.
• Lend your voice to advocacy efforts by signing the petition on endpolionow.org.

• Begin planning an End Polio Now lighting  to celebrate Rotary’s anniversary on 23 February.

• Contribute now to end polio.

Literacy Project

Literacy project promotes reading, writing in Burkina Faso

Posted on October 12, 2012

By Charlie Wasser, a member of the Rotary Club of Sunnyvale, California, USA

About 18 months ago, I transferred my membership to the Rotary Club of Sunnyvale, California, USA. I was excited when my new club embraced a literacy effort I had been involved in, receiving a global grant from The Rotary Foundation for a new media center in Hounde, Burkina Faso.

Through the literacy project, residents in villages surrounding the town of Hounde will learn to write their own books and print them using computers in the media center. Our club is partnering with the host club of Ouagadougou-Savane and Friends of African Village Libraries, which has built seven libraries in surrounding villages.

I have been working with Friends of African Village Libraries for the past four years, mostly collecting funds from clubs in our district for books to stock the libraries. Michael Kevane, formerly head of the economics department at Santa Clara University, started the organization and is now its co-director. During the first few years of the literacy project, students from Santa Clara University, under Kevane’s tutelage, will spend a semester in the village as part of an immersion program, writing two books and teaching a villager how to write a book and create images. The books will then be added to the libraries.

 A great feature of the Foundation’s new grant model, which District 5170 is helping test as part of the Future Vision pilot, is the emphasis on sustainability – the capacity of a project to continue benefiting the local community after funds have been expended. Our project addresses sustainability in a number of ways.

Villagers who learn to write will teach other villagers to write. In addition, we are making use of local resources. The town of Hounde has agreed to pay the salary of a half-time employee who will work at the new media center.

During the five-year scope of the project, children in the villages will have the opportunity to learn to read and write. The goal of the project is to equip the villages to continue raising the literacy level of the residents. Who knows, one of the children who learns to read and write may someday be the driving force that brings water, electricity, and greater prosperity to the villages.

• Learn more about sustainability in a learning module

• Basic education and literacy is one of Rotary’s six areas of focus. Read more about the areas of focus.
• Watch the video “Key to Literacy“

(article is reprinted from Rotary Voices.)